Do you know it? You have a problem and search for it on the Internet and find an article or a forum thread where exactly this one problem is discussed. I found a thread from 2004 that dealt with exactly the question I had. That got me thinking.
Internet of platforms
Since 2005 there has been more and more social media in our lives, living without social media today? Very few people can do it, too much up-to-date information is available there, some of it from the other side of the world, and you can discuss with users.
But is this still the real Internet? We are shifting more and more of ourselves to platforms, centralized entities of commercial interest that impose functions on us and remove them again as they wish.
And if we have a problem or a question on a certain topic, then I at least never look for an answer on Facebook, in the groups it depends on how active they are, sometimes you get answers between 15 minutes and 3 months.
No, I go online and search Google for sites and forums where a problem is being discussed.
And that's how I came across the forum thread from 2004.
Internet of people
In the past, before there were all the social networks, there were forums on the Internet where people exchanged views on various topics. And the special thing is that you can find these discussions and topics via search engines such as Google and Bing, something that doesn't apply to social networks. You can't find a discussion on Facebook on Google and I rarely find a LinkedIn Pulse article via Google search.
The search for answers in the past
And then I sit there and see the date when this thread was started: 2004 and think, fuck. I'm really old. I remind myself that 20 years ago, a human, not a bot or AI, as is slowly becoming normal today, asked this question.
On the one hand you realize how old you are and at the same time you realize how the internet connects people even over time. This realization, yes, that you can write people across time, a virtual journey through time, so to speak, is something I've already done a few times with YouTube videos, where I occasionally see videos on YouTube that are more than 10 years old and remind me of a somehow better time.
Where I look for comments that also focus on the topic of time and I comment "Hey, greetings from the year 2024, you're right, the song really is timeless. I hope wherever you are that you're doing well". That's the kind of comment I make. And think that I'm writing to someone who thought about it 10 years ago. I rarely get a reply, of course, how many people take the time to reply to a YouTube comment, right?
Virtual time travel: Connections across decades
And then I think, what if that person is no longer alive? Whether it's 10 or 20 years, so much happens in the world, there can be so many reasons why this person is no longer here.
And you realize, yes, all people die at some point, and so does the Internet, where they once left their mark.
This one person who had the same problem as me 20 years ago and then showed me the solution through the discussion may no longer be alive, but he has left his mark, indeed his knowledge of how to solve this problem.
We don't know if this person is still there or if they no longer exist, but to know that this person has helped you, even if you don't know them and don't even look at the username, that feeling you experience.
The uncertain fate of digital memories
Knowing that once these websites go offline because the operators no longer see any point or the operator dies and there is no one who has the passion to keep it going, with all this, the information and knowledge of people who once existed and left traces in the digital world will also be lost.
I think it's one of those things that 99% of people can't get excited about even thinking about, but it shows a big danger that the knowledge that's on the internet is not permanent and can be lost at any time and so we should be thinking about how we can store that human-generated knowledge to keep it accessible.
The year is 2024, and it is already difficult to get old movies and series from before 2000For those of us alive who have actively experienced these 24 years, it feels like the blink of an eye to wonder where all that time has gone and whether we could do more to protect and preserve knowledge and keep it accessible for future generations.
I don't want future historians to have to struggle through YouTube with clickbait and TikToks in order to find something useful historically.
The internet is dying and becoming smaller as there are fewer people who are active outside the big platforms, but this also means that what people left us decades ago is also dying. We must not make the mistake of losing the knowledge of this generation, just like the knowledge of hundreds of years ago, where there are only fragments that document the most important things in history. We do not necessarily have to Record next complaint on stone (Oldest written customer complaint) 😉
How do you see the future of the internet? Do you think we can find ways to secure our digital heritage for future generations? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments!
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